Parenting Coach Ruth Taylor Talks the What, Why and How of our Parenting Coaching Cards with MBM CEO Darren A. Smith
In this exclusive discussion, Ruth touches on why her experience as a parent herself and her training as a soft skills facilitator makes her the perfect coach to have written our deck of 80 parenting coaching cards. Ruth and Darren cover the what, the why and the how of this deck of coaching cards, together with a few key pieces of advice and guidance that can be found in this brand new deck!
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Read the Full Parenting Coaching Cards Podcast Transcript Below:
Darren A. Smith
Welcome to the world stickiest learning. My name is Darren Smith and more importantly, I'm here with Ruth Taylor. Ruth, how you doing?
Ruth Taylor
Pretty good today. Thank you. When I say today, for me it's night time.
Darren A. Smith
Good.
It is. Where are you in the world?
Ruth Taylor
Well, I decided to move from the UK all the way to the other side of the world, so I'm currently in New Zealand.
Darren A. Smith
Right. OK. So it's 9:00 AM here. It's probably about 9:00 PM there, isn't it?
Ruth Taylor
10:00.
Darren A. Smith
Oh, right. OK. Thank you very much for coming in. We've got 3 short questions for you about the cards that you created, which I can see on the right there. So the first question is: Why, in the nicest possible way, should we talk to you about parenting? What do you know about parenting?
Ruth Taylor
When I came to New Zealand, I had toddlers and now I have two adults who I'm very proud of. They're in their 20s now. I was very fortunate. I did parenting courses before I had parents.
Darren A. Smith
OK.
Ruth Taylor
Parents? before I had children.
Before I had children and that's something that most people don't get the chance to do. But I was trained as a parenting coach and a facilitator for courses by health promotion at the time to work with parents, and I thought this is awesome. I've got this and then what I found was the reality of having your own children is.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Not quite as simple as they made out.
But there were things which I was able to consider before having children, which maybe other people weren't, because obviously having gone on the courses, there was things I could talk to my husband about going. Have you ever thought about this? It was like, no. So those questions where I was thinking, well, how can we encourage other people to be able to ask those questions either before they even think about getting pregnant, when they are pregnant.
And all that. So that's really kind of where the coaching clads came from and also where the sort of sections of the the cards came from.
So and in my life I'm a facilitator. I I facilitate soft skill courses, communication skills, conflict management, leadership skills.
Emotional literacy. A lot of things like that. So I've worked in schools, I've worked in hospitals with leaders, with parents, with children. So I guess I have a different insight as well as.
How how we often think about children isn't actually how children think, and sometimes we don't think of the impact of our actions on our children.
And therefore having again having card which encourages to reflect before we open our mouths or before we make certain decisions means that hopefully we'll get more of the behaviour we're looking for.
Darren A. Smith
That that makes perfect sense. I know. When Gabby was born 25 years ago, these things don't come with a manual and you come home and you go.
I have no idea what to do. My life has changed.
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
The thing is, things change all the time, so these cards don't say do this do that, they say have you considered or? Where would you go for this information? So it's not a, not a guideline of saying, oh, you should pay it this way. And no, no, that's wrong. It's more case of well talk about it.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Decide as a couple because I don't know about yourself, but when I was first going out with my husband, working out how we're going to raise kids wasn't the first thing on our minds making them. Maybe you know that's that's you get your priorities right. So it's like well.
How do we how do you get to start these conversations?
Darren A. Smith
Very true. Yeah. Yeah. OK. All right, so you've got a lot of experience of parenting. You've done a lot of courses. You practise this, and then you created these cards. So what are these parenting coaching cards?
Ruth Taylor
Oh yeah.
So these are actually probably pretty much early on in the journey rather than later. Obviously, the journey up a parent is ever changing, engaging in fun and annoying and all the things it can be. So looking at the cards, we decided to actually go for kind of set of this 80 cards, something like that. But we broke it into five parts.
Darren A. Smith
OK.
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
And the reason for that was because, as I said, the whole preparation thing, there's a lot of people.
We're thinking about having children.
And this kind of like, well, what do you think about about having to what should I consider? I mean you've got the things like, can I afford it? I suppose that's a basic one, but what other things have I got here? Who do you, who are your role model parents and it's usual conversation to have with your partner, you know, who delaces good parents. Who do you see as good parents?
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
Ruth Taylor
Are you aware of the impact of technology on babies on the Super course of this one is what relationship do you currently have with your phone because that's a challenge that people might not actually consider it's like.
If you are someone who spends all your time on your mobile, on social media, your child is going to disturb you.
You're not going to be able to do that.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah, yeah. But we we see.
Ruth Taylor
I'm just going to push that. The cat is now meowing you can put.
Darren A. Smith
And it's all right. We we can't hear it. One of my my, my bugbears is when you go to a restaurant they have kids on a phone watching a film. You think. I don't think that's right for me as a parent but you know if they consider that I don't know.
Ruth Taylor
You got here. Oh, I'm working.
In my in my day it was. Don't put them in front of the television and I admit absolute you absolutely use the TV as a babysitter. But the thing about TV is you can walk in front of it, you can unplug it, you can turn it off.
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
Yes. Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
The thing about the phone is you don't know what they're looking at. You can't see what they're looking at, and you try and take that on off them. I tell you, they've got a grip like a vice. They ain't going to let go, and it's much, much easier to refuse than it is to remove.
Darren A. Smith
OK, OK, alright.
Ruth Taylor
It does not hold a concept that however hard it is you think to resist your child's desire to have one, trying to take it off of them afterwards. It's a lot harder and you will get a lot more noise, but that's that's just kind of my personal opinion. But there is a lot of research, there is a lot of research coming out to support that view.
Darren A. Smith
I'll get that. I'll get that.
So so you created 80 questions, there's five stages. Just tell us what those five stages were. Again, I know you showed us the card.
Ruth Taylor
I did and then I put it down and what did I do with it? Oh, here we go. So there's preparation, which is you're thinking of having kids, and you're starting to talk about it. So how to start talk? There's then pregnancy and people might think, well, what do I need to know and talk about? Pregnancy. Well, are you someone who is going to reveal the gender of your child?
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
OK. Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Do you want a gender of your party, or are you someone who's going to wait until you have the Charter to get it named? It's a little bit tense when you're having that. The scan and your husband's going. What's accident? You go. No, I don't want to know.
So it's again, it's having those conversations prior to that. Are you going to be OK with people coming up and touching your belly and or can I touch your belly? It's kicking. So you won't personal boundaries. And this is going to be different for everyone. So pregnancy.
Darren A. Smith
Up front, yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Are the vitamins you should be on. Are you doing any kind of lifestyle choices which maybe could harm your child? I mean, if you're a drinker or a smoker, are you going to give that up? These are things to consider. I don't know the answers.
The third section is parenting itself. So in that first 2-3 years, the first thousand days is very important. The child's.
Development. Yeah. How? How do you see?
Darren A. Smith
Sometimes. Wow. Yep. OK. Have you heard of that?
Ruth Taylor
It working as far as who's going to get up at night and how look after the kid. How are you looking to put in sort of rewards or sanctions or disciplining you know, what's your thoughts on that? How are you going to cope if the house goes to pot you know there's not it's not going to be tidy as it is now because you've got things going on is is this understood?
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Let me talk about partnerships and people, which is really other people in your life who may be involved with helping you to parent. So this could be a wider family over New Zealand would say father, which is a Maori word for for your wider family.
Darren A. Smith
OK. Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Are you looking to send your child to kindergarten or?
Nursery.
